The small business employing five full-time employees and a few part-time workers in McKinney and 10 remote workers in Nigeria donates 10% of profits to Working to Advance Science and Technology Education for African Women, the nonprofit Okorafor founded in 2007, while earning her Ph.D. in computer science at Texas A&M University.

Okorafor and her husband pooled together $500 from their $1,200 joint monthly income as graduate students to fund the first scholarship. She cried while she read the 400 applications for that one scholarship.

“There is so much need and we could only give one,” Okorafor said. That first recipient has given the scholarship back three times.

The nonprofit has transitioned out of solely granting academic scholarships and asks recipients to form chapters at their universities that evangelize science, technology, engineering and math by mentoring middle and high school students.

There’s more than 400 volunteers, across 60 university chapters in 22 countries.

“I feel a lot of pride, I’m humbled,” Okorafor said. “I’m amazed at the power of these young girls.”

Okorafor left Nigeria for Texas in 1999 to earn her master’s at Rice University. After graduating from Texas A&M, she worked at companies like Intel and moved to Dallas-Fort Worth in 2008 for a role at Texas Instruments where she developed software for technology students used in the classroom. She left the corporate world two years later out of exhaustion and took her three children back to Nigeria for five weeks.

During that visit, she was reminded of how papaya grew wild and how she and her kids felt healthier eating fresh fruits. After returning to the U.S., she realized that the papaya she ate tasted different. She tried Asian markets, Latino grocers, organic food stores and it still wasn’t right, she said.

The researcher in her kicked in, she said. She learned that papayas were among the first genetically modified fruits. Then began her quest to find non-GMO suppliers of papaya leaves to make tea and soon after, began Herbal Goodness.

Since 2011 she’s worked with a certified farmer in Sri Lanka to source organic papaya leaves. The brand’s Papaya Leaf tea is their signature product, meant to offer blood platelet support and immunity and digestion aid.

In recent years, the demands of the wellness industry have shifted, Okorafor said. It’s no longer a niche market where consumers come into the store looking for single-ingredient products like graviola leaf extract and moringa leaf extract. Instead, shoppers are expecting herb teas, tinctures and supplements labeled with what they can offer: solutions for stress relief, a better night’s sleep or energy.

The U.S. wellness market is estimated to be worth more than $480 billion, according to McKinsey & Company’s January Future of Wellness research.

By not spelling out what each ingredient could provide, Herbal Goodness was missing out on a big chunk of potential clients.

“Last year was a big aha moment,” Okorafor said. “We’ve got to go with the trends and people want functional.”

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